1. Field of the Invention
The claimed invention relates to a printing method of a thermal printer, and more particularly, to a method for multi-layer printing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Please refer to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a thermal printer 10, and FIG. 2 is a diagram of a dye ribbon 12 used in the thermal printer 10. The thermal printer 10 comprises a dye ribbon 12, a thermal print head 14, an auto-insert mechanism 16, and a turnover mechanism 18. The auto-insert mechanism 16 is used to feed a card 20 into the thermal printer 10, and the turnover mechanism 18 is used to turn over the card 20. A dye ribbon 12 comprises a plurality of dye areas 30Y, 30M, 30C, 30W, 30G, and 30K which are respectively used to print out yellow, magenta, cyan, watermark, golden, and black colors. When the thermal print head 14 is heated, its thermal energy can transfer color from the dye areas 30Y–30K to the card 20. Each dye area 30Y–30K has a partition 32 or 34 in front of it, which helps the thermal printer 10 to recognize the beginning of each dye area 30Y–30K. Furthermore, the dye areas 30Y–30K appear repeatedly, and a partition 32 can be used to recognize the beginning of dye areas 30Y–30K in each dye section. There are many kinds of dye ribbons that can be used in the thermal printer 10, the dye ribbon 14 mentioned above is merely one of them.
However, software tools for the thermal printer are difficult to use at present; users usually need a lot of time to learn these. Please refer to FIG. 3. FIG. 3 is the interface of an editing tool used in the thermal printer. In the prior art, when a thermal printer user needs to edit print data, he or she must open an editing window 40 as shown in FIG. 3. The editing window 40 comprises an input frame 42 for editing print data and an output frame 43 for displaying edited data. Users can use the columns and control buttons in the input frame 42 to edit the printing data. For example, if a user wanted to print out his portrait and his name on a card (i.e. to make a business card), he could edit the portrait file path and the corresponding name with the input frame 42. Such editing tools usually have different editing windows for all kinds of printing effects, and the editing window 40 mentioned in FIG. 3 is merely one of these. When users use a thermal printer for multi-layer printing, the edit tools are too complicated to operate. In addition, the above edit tool cannot preview images, so it is difficult to get the desired result on the first attempt at printing.